A Delicate Truth

A counter-terrorist operation codenamed Wildlife is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar, in this newest psychological thriller from the grand master of espionage fiction. An ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far right intend to capture a high-value jihadist arms buyer, in an operation so delicate that even the Minister's personal secretary Toby Bell is not cleared for it. Three years later, a disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead—was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be, or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Toby is summoned by retired British diplomat Sir Christopher "Kit" Probyn to his decaying Cornish manor house where, closely observed by Kit's daughter Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and his duty to the Service.

"At the moment a new generation is stumbling upon his work, [John] le Carré is still writing at something close to the top of his game.... [This book] is an elegant yet embittered indictment of extraordinary rendition, American right-wing evangelical excess and the corporatization of warfare. It has a gently flickering love story and jangling ending. And le Carré has not lost his ability to sketch, in a line or two, an entire character."—NYTimes Magazine